NYT: Questions About Google Acquisition

Guardian: The genius of blogging

Wired: Why Did Google Want Blogger?

Everyone's got the same question, but the answers are not forthcoming. The Guardian's commentator John Naughton had the best analysis of the acquisition of major media stuff I've seen, including this summation:

So something really serious is afoot: the Net has once again demonstrated its capacity to unleash disruptive innovation on a complacent establishment. The question then becomes: where does Google fit into this picture? My guess is that it's a re-run of Google's inspired acquisition of Deja News's Usenet archive in February 2001. That archive contained the only record of the global conversation which had been conducted through Internet discussion groups in the 1970s and 1980s - in other words, the most significant content available prior to the explosion of the Web in 1993. Since then, Google has made it accessible to everyone - turning it from a reserve into a resource in the terminology of the energy industries.

Frankly, I think the best analysis of the acquisition is still coming from bloggers themselves; a good link of commentary is at the bottom of Dan Gillmor's piece that broke the story.